Spin the Bottle

Elijah

[Nightmares]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 1 )

Elijah

[how many drinks in is he?]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

Elijah

The music thumps.

Elijah doesn't know that someone called the cops on a noise complaint, he just knows that he isn't tipsy yet and there is nowhere to actually talk to people. The apartment is crawling with human beings, not that he minds, generally Elijah likes there to be places packed so full with people that he can taste heartbeats and feel drum beats but it's people his own age he's partying with tonight and no one really knows how he they got all the booze and the weed and the coke and the pills and it's a DEA raid just waiting to explode at any given moment because there's enough junk at this not-a-rave that someone could get in some serious trouble.

Which is about where we open the scene.

Elijah, for some unknown reason, got roped into playing spin the bottle with some of his cohorts, despite having to remind them that this was not Throwback Thursday, but nobody seems to care and it's fun enough because it doesn't matter who is in the circle or out of the circle because they're damned adults now and there's enough stuff floating around that someone is going to end up fucking someone else by the end of the night but that's neither here nor there. Something tells Elijah that he needs to get going, because things are going to go south really quick. But, not until he spins, of course, not until his turn is over because, frankly, his last turn he'd ended up doing body shots off a sorority girl and the turn before that he'd exchanged phone numbers with a gym rat who pulled his punches and didn't know what to do when a man kissed him.

In all honesty, Elijah kind of liked that. Off-balance machismo. The kind of people that don't know what to do with base attraction. The kind of people that do know what to do with base attraction. People, really. Elijah liked people.

but we weren't talking about people, we were only tangentially talking about them. Elijah spins. And waits for the beer bottle to stop.

Maxine

People made a sea in this cramped apartment. In defense of the apartment and the apartment's owner, it's not nearly so cramped when it's filled with a reasonable number of bodies. There was nothing reasonable about the number of people here, though. People were brushing shoulder-to-shoulder, there weren't enough rooms for people to have privacy in when sneaking away so some had couples doubled up and sharing space. This was going to be a night that many people didn't really discuss in polite company when all was said and done.

There were so many people here that nobody seemed to notice or care that there were some strangers slipping their way in through the doors. Among them, one petite Asian girl (though it took hearing her voice and actually getting close enough to examine her to recognize that she wasn't a boy, to place a gender identity to that very androgynous build and face). Maxine Choi wasn't there for the pills or the coke or the booze or even her favorite substance, the weed. What vices she had she kept in her van, for herself to be able to use when she felt appropriate. Vices weren't her reason for wandering through the door.

No, it was the fact that the fridge would be unguarded. When you were pinching pennies and unafraid of judgment, an open door and thumping music in an apartment building was too strong a beacon for Free Food to resist. She'd helped herself to a sandwich, didn't bother to wash the plate or knife when she was done, and scooped up a beer bottle to check out the rest of the fuss.

Oh, look, people in a circle! She'd check that out next.

This curiosity drew Maxine to the spinning bottle, and because Chance was a fickle thing that the Great White Something Up Above had a hand in, and because Great Bright White had an amazing sense of humor, the fingers that spun the bottle belonged to one Mage, and the mouth was pointed to the other Mage in the room when the spinning came to a stop.

"Well, fancy that," Maxine, still standing, swigged from the beer bottle and winked one eye at Elliot. Her tone was mild, but she sparkled a reflection of that Bright White Humor for the scenario that had unfolded.

Elijah

What was it with Elijah and women who were nearly a foot shorter than he was? There was something he had to contend with when he spent time with Alicia- the fact that she was constantly being sat on top of counters or bent over things or standing on steps or anything really to counteract the fact that Elijah was tall and she was not. It was the same with Maxine- Maxine Choi was not a tall woman.

There were people in a circle and the blond man with the perpetual grin locked eyes with Maxine. She winked, and he arched a brow, something halfway to suggestive but frankly it was Elijah so everything was already halfway to suggestive. He looked at her, and for a second he forgot what he was supposed to be doing because something still told him that things were going to go tits up and he had to come up with a plan but there was Maxine there and Maaaaaxiiiiiiiiiine, how imagination whined at him. She was cute in a non-gender-specific way, which frankly didn't bother him in the slightest. In fact, it was something of a plus because his imagination wandered and-

Exhale. Focus.

Okay, so he stood up and offered her a hand. Elijah cocked his head to a coat closet nearby, "who am I to argue with the will of Samuel Adams?"

Maxine

The surge of hipster popularity in their age group made it easier for Maxine's sense of style and image to be accepted. Her hair was clipped short and shaggy, left its natural hues of dark, to hang over her ears and reach the back of her neck. For someone whose belief system was so strongly entrenched in color and bright sounds, she typically dressed dark-- that's what Elijah's seen of her so far.

Tonight, though, there's a loose-cut gray shirt with the sleeves hacked off that draped and hung from her skinny frame. The arm-holes were big enough to show ribs and waist, as well as the tight band of black fabric that kept what meager breast tissue she had covered and flush to the body. The denim shorts that went with were long and stopped just above her knees. Her sneakers were fluorescent with now neon-pink they were, and her fingernails matched. It was astounding that she was overlooked enough to get away with making a sandwich in the first place.

Elijah raised an eyebrow, extended a hand, and conceded to the decision that Samuel Adams had made. Maxine just grinned, and the expression mimicked a shark for how sharp and toothy it was, then reached out to accept the hand. Her hands and fingers were small and cool. She'd stepped across into the center of the circle to meet him.

"Oh I know who you are to argue with anything," she informed him.

But she adjusted the black fedora on her head and held body language and a loose and pliable manner anyways-- it all said Lead on. What it didn't suggest or indicate, though, was something to answer the suggestion in Elijah's raised brow and curved fingertips from that extended hand. She looked like she'd just been asked if she wanted to go on a hike, and was waiting to hear which trail they were headed to.

Elijah

[How do I approach this? Awarepathy for the win]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Maxine

To read Maxine is a little bit like looking into the maw of a maniac. Not that she's volatile or crazy or unhinged or anything, she's just so different from the rest of the people in the room, from the general population of humanity as a whole. That was what happened when you could See and Manipulate creation and the matter of the universe as a whole. Your mind has to break and bend and adjust to make room for that sort of knowledge and ability.

So, when Elijah was looking down into Maxine's oval face, trying to find out how he should handle her while leading her into that closet, he'd find the canvas he's reading to be covered in an abstract sort of art.

She was open, willing. There wasn't anything particularly nervous or reluctant or anxiety-riddled about her. She had the temperament and approach and stride of someone who was casually floating down the river on a tube, sipping that beer in her other hand and waiting to see where the current would take her.

Maxine Choi was a wanderer, and so she had to be as adaptable as the settings that she'd pass through. Elijah could imagine that there was plenty that Maxine could simply roll with-- he didn't have to worry about fiery reactions or volatile tempers or shrinking violets from this curious girl.

Elijah

Oh I know who you are to argue with anything, she informed him."Oh really?" he replied, and that grin hand't gotten off of his face. His constant companion. His fingers curl around hers, something comfortable because heavens if he wasn't comfortable at that juncture. He gave her a little tug, his attention set on the coat closet by the front door. Nobody was actually using it at that juncture- because really, it was just another room, albeit a tiny room full of coats and a vacuum cleaner. He backed in once the door was open, feeling a rather familiar poke of a broom hitting his ribs and the press of fake fur at his shoulders. There's half a dozen board games over head, some of which even have all of their pieces and haven't been subbed out with chic lets and pennies and whatever else people use for markers when you can't find all the pieces.

Lead on, she says, and lead on he does once they're both in, he shuts the door and there is the sound of hollering and applause and laughter outside, and in the near lack of light all there is happens to be tactile sensation and Elijah reached forward to cup her cheek. She can practically feel that damned grin on his face, like the world was wonderful. Like this was precisely what he'd wanted to do, but instead of sweet nothings, she gets

"The cops are gonna show up soon."

Maxine

Once the closet door had closed, people outside clapped and hooted. Maxine had followed Elijah into the closet as though she'd hardly noticed the others around them-- no one else got a glance or a smile. She didn't scowl or treat folks with disdain, simply hardly seemed to notice them beyond lifting her feet a little higher to step over a leg or sprawled body.

The closet was cramped, on account of it being a goddamn closet, not to mention how much space Elijah took up. He wound up with a broom handle snuggling to his ribcage, and Maxine pressed herself back into a corner nearer the door, slid the vacuum to the side with a rattle-rattle-thump so that it wasn't cramping her up uncomfortably either.

"I haven't even played this game since--," she'd begun to explain when his fingers had groped through the dark to find her face and cup her cheek. Her voice had been aimed downward, he'd found she was aiming her face toward the floor. When he'd cupped her cheek, though, she'd looked back up. She didn't stop talking because he'd touched her or because she was getting ready to yield herself to those seven minutes of heaven, but rather because he'd begun talking and she figured she'd better listen.

The cops are gonna show up soon, he'd explained, and Maxine gave a delighted laugh that was muffled only because she didn't want to shout-laugh in the closet. He felt a hot puff of air on his chin to go along with the sound.

"Well of course they are. This party is a spotlight. I mean, I spied it from a block and a half away and then just walked right in."

There's a pause, thoughtful, and she asked: "Well, should we walk right out?"

Elijah

"Oh fuck no, we've got at least seven minutes."

Elijah

[how many rounds until the cops show up?]

Elijah

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Maxine

"Hm."

The answer was contemplative, a little noise of thought from the muffled dark in front of the tall young man. It wasn't pitch black in there, no, they could make out the outlines of one another's heads and shoulders and limbs-- see the shine of eyes catching what little light made its way through the cracks in the doors.

His hand was still on her face. Maxine reached up, not to stroke or disengage that hand, but rather to feel for Elijah's face as well. Fingertips weren't invasive or rough, thankfully, because she found his nose and the corner of his mouth first. When that oriented her, she cupped her palm to his face to mirror him.

"Well okay then, let's spend them." The second hand came up to join the first, so she was holding either side of his face. Not cradling gently, not bracing in place, but more like she was grounding him. Or playing with boundaries within that closet, one of the two. She smelled like the beer that she'd abandoned to be able to hold his face, but her breath didn't carry weed smoke or anything else telling of intoxication.

"Let's spend them on magic and rending the universe. You know how, I picked that up. You and that girl we smoked with."

Elijah

[literal magic in a closet. Entropy 1- are you lying?]

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (9) ( success x 1 )

Elijah

Let's spend time rending the universe, and he didn't need any more invitation than that. Because she was talking about things, about how she knew that both he and Alicia could bend the world to their will and all he could do was let out some breathless laugh, press his lips to hers as though he needed it to call her bluff, as though the world was coming together and falling apart and for a second there was a feeling. A passionate, explosive feeling. A turbulent, spinning, exuberant feeling. Something boisterous and chaotic and very distinctly the man who was standing in the closet with her. The one who bent at the knee and tipped his head and kissed her lips and damned if he couldn't help himself.

He let a hand slip around her waist, and wished more than anything for something for her to stand on because he was pretty sure that staying crouched for however long it took the cops to show up was going to be murder on his knees. Not like Elijah didn't do any number of things that were hard on his knees, but he was young and vital and could worry about his knees when he was dead.

He was going to be one of those people who died at twenty seven. young, brilliant, and ever so terribly dead.

He pulled back, just long enough to reply, "how'd you figure it out? About me and Alicia?"

Maxine

She felt him moving before she felt his lips, so when he leaned in there was a chuckle in the air for him to taste before he found that she wore Carmex on her lips to keep them protected from the sun and from the cracking that could come when they dried out. He hasn't interacted with her a very large amount, but in the few times that they have met before she hasn't seemed a very sensual creature. She hadn't flirted with him or Alicia any while they were lounging on the grass, and had instead seemed more content to just smoke and talk and scrub on her grouchy little dog's hackles when the animal had rounded nearby.

Sexuality is a difficult thing to peg down, and Maxine hadn't displayed any signs of what hers might be, if she laid claim to any at all. But when Elijah's lips found and crushed into hers, Maxine didn't clam up or go stiff, didn't clamp her mouth closed and squiggle her face to break away. She kissed him back, met that chaotic twisting turbulence of passionate grasping and tasting with a solid, steady compliance. Her waist was slim, he could wrap his hand about it. There wasn't much curve to be found there, but his focus was more in the vibrations and fibers of being than it was in the shape of her hip, wasn't it?

He broke away, and Maxine laughed a little breathlessly at him. She'd dropped her hands from his face while they'd kissed, was holding onto his forearms now instead. She didn't exactly sound condescending, but rather delighted that he was on a shared page with her.

"How do we figure anything out? We feel and sense, don't we? A shepherd recognizes another shepherd even on the horizon, after wading through a sea of sheep for so long." She jerked her head to wipe the corner of her mouth on her bare shoulder.

"Are there others?"

Elijah

She rolls with the punches, she takes what comes and moves with it accordingly. She lets the world happen, does not push against it, takes the good and the bad and takes all of it for what it was and Elijah could respect that. He could respect what he interpreted. He could respect a lot of things, like how she didn't' clam up or break away, how she kissed back and and he was met with acceptance. Something Elijah had always wanted- but that went beyond kissing, beyond magic, something more personal and more intimate than kissing and not what they were discussing at that juncture.

Were there others?

"Yeah," he said, and there was delight in his features. Joy in his countenance, "wanna meet them?"

Because this he could share. He could share Lucy and Kalen and Sera if she were back in town. he could share Eleanor and Richard and the people he met that he was starting to count among his friends. People who were like him, people who didn't think he was crazy because he heard voices, but acknowledged that he might be insane for any other reason. They hadn't ruled that out yet. Elijah might well be crazy.

But not because of the magic. Not yet, at least.`

Maxine

Crazy was a subjective thing, and Maxine would be one of the first to back that up. Everyone had their own demons and secrets, their own storage space of things from the past (or even the future) that chattered in your mind and kept rearing up at moments most inopportune. Maxine had plenty of experience there, but she certainly hadn't spoken up to express that, not just yet anyways.

They were still crammed up quite close in that closet. Maxine kept one hand on Elijah's forearm, just above his wrist. The other hand had departed, though, to start groping around for the beer bottle she'd set down on some shelf above their heads that she could hardly reach. As she groped blindly in the dark, she spoke in the same hushed, close tone that she'd been using.

"Well of course I wanna meet them. How come you've been holding out on me, 'Lijah?"

If she were a more assertive sort to go along with her open directness, she might have pressed into him because hey they had another six or so minutes left in this tiny room so why not spend it? She wasn't that way, though, so instead she stood still (save for that beer-hunting hand). While she'd participated in making out, she didn't seem to be encouraging or directing it to go further.

Elijah

[OMG don't drop Maxine]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Elijah

"Because I suck, that's why," and that was the only real reason that he could offer. The only thing he could think of to say for holding out on her, on not saying anything about the fact that there were not only others, but there were others that he knew and could introduce her to with relative ease. That he was delighted to introduce her to, as a matter of fact. but there he was, with about six minutes to kill before the cops got there and they had time.

There was the lingering feeling of magic in the air, and he wondered what she felt like, his hands wandered, and she was reaching up for a beer bottle and he was pulling in, belt a hand fall about her waist and another trail down before it hitched at her thigh and he lifted-

Which was not easy for him. It was a testament to stubbornness that he wanted to be certain that he could actually keep touching her without having to crane nearly a foot downward in order to do so, and he pressed in again, lips instead finding a place at her jawline, moving downward, and between breaths he was curious, so he asked-

"Are you new to this too?" Magic, that is. Not making out in closets.

Maxine

The people outside the closet door were given reason to whoop, if they were even paying attention anymore, by the scuttle-clutter of things falling down within the closet. When Elijah had tucked a hand under her thigh and hefted to pick her up, there was a moment where she grasped and scrambled for purchase. Like she was worried that he was going to drop her and she was going to knock her head against the vacuum.

Some combination of his stubborn will to make this work god damnit and her seizing hold of the shelf above her head to help draw her weight up got them to a point where Elijah was able to prop the 100 lbs soaking wet of her back against the corner in which she stood and use the walls to help support her weight, along with hands and hips that wedged her there.

One hand stayed up, arm bent over her head so she could keep holding that shelf for safety. The other hand rested on the back of Elijah's head, on top of his hair rather than lacing into it. He felt her head move, chin and jaw shifting up and away to give him more space at her neck and shoulder (she smelled like simple Irish Spring soap, no hairspray or perfume or anything of the type). He wanted to feel her, like how she could feel the rushing sensation that his pushing and prodding of the universe had left around them, but she did nothing to provide such a firecracker sensation that occurred when Maxine started to play with the fabric of the world she walked.

For now, he had to settle for tasting the salt of her collar bone and the tips of her fingers scrubbing light, thoughtful, at his scalp. When she spoke, her tone was a controlled kind of calm, like she was trying to flatten it out to sound unhindered by the handsy boy in the closet with her (even if her legs had wrapped and clenched about his hips to help support her own weight).

"'This'? Here, yes. Kind of new to knowing, though. I suppose it depends on your perception of 'new'." Something he did had her breath hitch, and she followed that up with a bit of a surprised laugh. Delighted with the fooling around rather than swept away by it. "Can't call myself a force to be reckoned with just yet though."

Elijah

[Because practicing magic with Maxine is fun, Entropy 1!]

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (6) ( success x 1 )

Elijah

That was the sensation he craved, that moment where someone's legs were wrapped around his hips and the feeling of toned muscle and the sensation of another human being and he didn't care if the cops were coming- Hell, he didn't care if the cops walked in right now, because there was a moment that he was in the middle of and damned if he wanted to interrupt it for red-and-blue sirens and a too-bright flash light.

She was giving him a chance to practice, to indulge in more than one way. His lips pressed to her collarbone, to her neck and his heart beat harder, faster, rhythmic, and there was that moment of contact. There was that rush again, that turbulence and that moment during the hurricane- not the eye but the storm itself, something stronger than it had been before, if only because it was a crescendo in motion. He had sensation, the feeling of her hands in his hair- and his hair is surprisingly soft for a young man. There is the press of a pocket watch in his vest pocket that reminded him of its presence by pushing into his ribs.

Elijah closed his eyes, took in the chaos of the universe, and was content. She was honest. He caught that much, he knew that much, "I don't have a tradition." He takes a leap, assumes she does have one, or that she'll know what he's talking about. He can't stop himself, though, one tend travels to hold under her thigh.

Maxine

Sensitive in particular to the ebb and flow of magic around her, Maxine couldn't help but wonder if the mere Resonating presence of the young man wasn't more the reason for her feeling short of breath. She could also blame the tight, hot air in the closet, filled as it was with coats forgotten and stored for the season. But it would be a lie to say that she wasn't happy to say Fuck The Police and milk the minutes in the closet too. She didn't revel in the contact in quite the way that Elijah did-- couldn't see and touch and manipulate The World from the sheer bucking thrill of having someone wrapped about and close to you.

No, Maxine's magic flowed through different outlets. Things surprisingly archaic, considering this was a young woman who looked like she fit in with a crowd of people never apart from their iSomethings. She couldn't bend reality in that closet along with him, but she could sense the torrents and waves that he created by doing so.

His confession caused a huff in Maxine's chest and throat, stating that he carried no Tradition (she kept that word with a capital letter, see), but she didn't trip or falter with the information. She was still with her hands, one keeping steady above and the other cupping and following where his head went. He could pick up that while she was willing, she wasn't too experienced. Clearly, she had no clue what she was supposed to do with her hands.

"That's really personal. I think so; the Tradition, that is."

Her head tipped back down, and dark eyes hunted through the pitch-like shadows for the outline of Elijah's head and face. "Are you asking mine?"

Elijah

[If I cop a feel, is she gonna freak out?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

Maxine

Elijah was astoundingly well-tuned this evening, and was reading Maxine like a book. He'd be no doubt intrigued to find that in reading her, the pages were large and the font was large, too. The language was straightforward, just surreal, in the book that was Maxine Choi.

Wide-eyed and novice (but not that novice) though she may be, he has the sense that she's not going to freak out if he twists things up another notch. She seems the sort that wouldn't have indulged him at all if she didn't want to see what would happen.

Elijah

He had a number of things he had wanted to do, a number of questions he had wanted to ask and things he was thinking about, but one of them had misjudged time. It was funny, really, because the moment one hand traveled upward, between the fabric of her shirt and over the band that rested over her chest, his lips found hers again and he wondered if her pulse would race or if she would stay that steady calm, and he was definitely in the moment. His lips tasted like chaos and tequila, and his mind was reeling with anticipation. There was a world of things Elijah could do, wanted to do, and that was-

... interrupted by a police officer flinging the door open.

Elijah blinked, but didn't stop kissing Maxine.

Maxine

Her shirt was loose, easy to slip a hand under. The band was close-fitting, but pushed aside easily. There wasn't much there to fondle, but Maxine gasped, muttered "Oh doux matin," and kissed him back.

The door flung open and Maxine startled, jerked between Elijah's torso and the wall. She'd wrapped an arm about his neck and shoulders now rather than touching his hair, but never released the shelf over her head-- like it was serving for the reigns in this bull ride of a bottle spin. Elijah had blinked, but refused to cease. Maxine opened her eyes to look over at the officer in the doorway, who looked exasperated and exhausted and hardly entertained by this display, then closed them again and laughed against the other Mage's mouth.

Let the police chase them out, then, or round them up. Whatever that may be. What's the worst that could come of it?

There were others. Others. And this Elijah boy, directionless-Traditionless, was one of them. Maxine would definitely call the night well worth it.